The Parliament approved today the draft resolution of the PAN – People-Animals-Nature that recommends the Government to proceed with the construction of the new Hospital de Lagos, “as a health infrastructure in proximity, with an adequate planning of its future aspects and integrated in the health care network'.
The PAN initiative is linked to the fact that available data point to a deterioration of healthcare in the Algarve in recent years.
The Hospital de Lagos, in particular, has suffered a reduction in its capacity to provide hospital healthcare to the populations of the municipalities of Lagos, Aljezur and Vila do Bispo, as well as to national and foreign tourists visiting this region.
Services and services were withdrawn, namely operating room and maternity, and human and material resources were reduced, despite the insistent and repeated public protests and positions taken by both the population and local authorities, which culminated in the presentation of a petition with no. 615/XIII/4 which, with more than four thousand signatures, requests the adoption of measures with a view to the construction of a new hospital unit.
According to a February SIC/Expresso poll, the crisis in the National Health Service (SNS) has been dragging on for too long in the Algarve, which stands out as the region in the country with the most negative assessment of the quality of health services in Portugal: “There is a shortage of specialists, patients referred to Lisbon, health extensions that have closed, others work every other day, there are patients who wait months for an appointment at the health centers or to be referred to hospital emergencies because there is no local response”.
INE data from 2019 confirm that proportionally more people die in hospitals in the Algarve than in any other region of the country.
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